1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to communications systems, and in particular, to conferencing systems for creating and managing conference calls.
2. Description of Related Art
Over the past several years, push-to-talk services have been introduced to consumers by carriers and service providers. In the typical scenario, a consumer subscribing to a push-to-talk service is provided with a special cellular telephone device (hereinafter referred to as a two-way radio device) by the carrier. To communicate with another push-to-talk subscriber, the consumer depresses a push-to-talk button on the two-way radio. The consumer's voice is immediately heard by the other subscriber. The advantage of such a push-to-talk service is the elimination of various delays associated with call setup, including dialing, ringing and answering. The operation is analogous to land mobile radio users who communicate using “walkie-talkies”, except that the voice is carried by the cellphone service provider's network instead of the radio channel itself.
Also over the past several years, multi-party voice conference services have become common in the marketplace. Voice conferencing services enable three or more parties on different telephone devices to participate in a single call. Traditionally, such conferencing services were provided by a private branch exchange (PBX) or local exchange carrier (LEC) that allowed a conference call originator to manually dial the other parties of the conference call, place them on “hold” and then patch them together by simultaneously releasing the holds.
More recently, conference bridges have been developed that are able to combine multimedia communications from multiple telephone devices in a multi-party conference call. A conference bridge may be located within a public or private network and may be implemented on a single (central conference bridge) switch or multiple switches. In conference bridge applications, the conference originator may reserve a certain number of connections (i.e., ports) on a conference bridge by manually interacting with an operator of the conference bridge or by interacting with an automated conferencing bridge system. Once the conference originator has reserved the requisite number of ports on the bridge, the conference originator provides each participant with a dial-in telephone number and access code for the conference bridge and an access code for entering the conference call. To join the conference call, each participant must dial the dial-in telephone number for the conference bridge, and when prompted, enter the access code for the conference call.
Two-way radio services and conference services are used in a number of different applications, but have particular importance in emergency situations. Recent catastrophes such as 911, Katrina and Rita have demonstrated the urgent need for effective voice and data communication between various emergency workers and teams. For example, fire department personnel, using one type of two-way radio, must be able to communicate with police, using a second type of two-way radio, along with other officials using telephone devices (i.e., cellular telephones, PSTN or PBX telephones or Voice over IP (VoIP) telephones) to discuss the nature of the emergency and the proper course of action.
However, conventional conference bridges only support the joining of telephone devices in a conference call, and not two-way radio. Therefore, either the police/firemen must maintain a telephone device to communicate with the other officials or the other officials must maintain a two-way radio device to communicate with the police and firemen. This is inconvenient and also may not provide adequate or effective communication. There is currently no mechanism for facilitating conference communications between two-way radio users and telephone users.
In addition, in some scenarios, it may also be critical for various officials to be joined together within a data collaboration session during the conference call with the police and/or firemen. For example, officials may need to jointly view overhead maps and other diagrams, such as building blueprints showing exits and stairways, while simultaneously communicating with the police and/or firemen. However, again, there is currently no system that provides data collaboration during a conference call involving telephones and two-way radio devices.
Furthermore, during an emergency situation, it may be necessary for a particular user to barge-in to one or more conference calls and interrupt any other conversations taking place during the conference call(s) to deliver an important or emergency announcement. However, current conference systems do not allow an existing or new participant to one or more conference calls to interrupt those conference call(s), such that all conference participants can only hear the interrupting participant and no other participants.
Therefore, what is needed is a system that enables two-way radio devices and telephone devices to be joined together in a voice conference call and that further enables simultaneous data collaboration. In addition, what is needed is a conferencing system that provides for dynamic control of voice states of conference participants.